Fun With Ebook Formatting: The Title Page and Front Matter

I have a conflict…

I love front matter When I open an ebook I want to see all the good stuff the writer wants to include: title page, epigraph, publishing history, dedication, introduction, foreword and whatever else there is. I read all that stuff. I get annoyed when I get a new ebook and it opens to the first page of the story. I have to go back, go back, go back (sigh) to get to the real beginning.

The conflict comes with samples and “Look Inside.” When I’m contemplating purchasing a book, I want the writing, the story, and I get annoyed if I have to page through all the front matter, especially if there is a lot of it and precious little writing to sample.

How to resolve this conflict? Until the distributors allow the producer to customize the sample, this will continue to be a problem for me. I honestly don’t know if it’s a problem for anyone else.

We’ll leave that alone for now and talk about the mechanics of title pages and front matter.

Does your book need a title page? I think so, yes. An ebook without a title page feels like a manuscript and I don’t pay to read manuscripts. In some cases, such as for distribution through Smashwords, it’s a requirement. Let’s get that out of the way first. For Smashwords you need a title page that looks like this:

The Greatest American Novel Evah
JW Manus

Smashwords Edition
copyright 2013, JW Manus

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

_____________________________________

That’s what is says in the style guide. That’s what you should insert in your Smashwords edition.

With just about everything else, how your title page looks and what information it contains are entirely up to you. I like the fancy bits. As for what to include on the title page, as long as the title and author name are in place, you have a title page.

A title page is a good place to insert the publishing history and copyright information.

If you don’t want a separate “legal” page, you can also include disclaimers and design information.

A quick word about the Table of Contents in the front matter. They’re a pain in my patoot. New devices have an excellent built-in ToC. If you click “Go To” on a Paperwhite or Fire, you’ll open up a window with a complete Table of Contents (if the ebook has been properly built). On older Kindles, though, the Go To menu sends you to the user generated Table of Contents. I have heard rumors that Amazon will automatically start the ebook after the ToC, ignoring whatever the producer has designated as the beginning. Ay yi yi. That’s swell–unless your ebook has 70 named chapters. Then readers who “Look Inside” will see page after page of Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, etc ad nauseum. I am trying a bit of a cheat.That’s the “official” Table of Contents, the very first “page” in the ebook. Click the index and it takes readers to an index that contains all the chapters along with links to photos.

My best advice is to figure out how the devices work and learn to work with them, always keeping in mind that the Look Inside and sample features are selling tools and readers want prose, not a long list of cryptic chapter titles. That said, if you are formatting a non-fiction project, a detailed Table of Contents might actually be one of your best selling tools. I know when I’m looking for reference materials, for instance, the first thing I look at is the ToC to make sure the book contains the information I’m looking for. The same thing applies to anthologies with multiple authors.

What about other front matter? Dedications are nice. Acknowledgments tend to be longer. My rule of thumb is, if it fits on one “page” then put it in the front matter. If it’s longer, put it in the back of the book. The same general rule applies to A Notes to the Reader or A Note From the Author.

Introductions and forewords, and even prologues, can be a problem if you’re not careful in how you build your ebook. If you aren’t building your own toc.ncx, you need to make sure your essential front matter is styled with Heading 1 or Heading 2, (h1 or h2) otherwise the conversion program might home in on Chapter One and readers will miss essential information. If the rumors are true, and Kindles are determining the “beginning” as the first “page” after the ToC, you risk ending up with a mess. So test your book on an actual device and make sure the beginning is where you want it to be.

A perfectly serviceable layout for the front matter of a novel:

• Table of Contents (truncated if it’s a long non-informative list)
• Title Page
• Copyright or Legal page (if your novel has a lengthy publication history, it might be best to put this page in the back matter)
• Dedication or short acknowledgement (put a long acknowledgements page in the back matter)
• Epigraph (if you have one)
• Foreword or Introduction
• The Story

What about the rest of you? Any opinions on Title Pages and front matter in ebooks?

 

Fun With Formatting Ebooks: Paragraph Styles

Whether a reader is conscious or not of doing it, they are judging at least some of the quality of your writing by how it looks on the screen. When you send your writing into the world you want it to look polished, professional, and assertive. Even if you don’t use fancy bits and curlicues, you can make your ebook look polished, professional and, yes, assertive–as in, “I am a smart and sophisticated writer who knows what she is talking about, so pay attention!“–just by taking care with your paragraph styles.

The most basic of basic styles are indented and block paragraphs. Convention says, indented paragraphs for fiction and block style for non-fiction. Why the convention? Indented paragraphs are quicker to read (not really, but doesn’t it seem that way?), while block paragraphs tend to be weightier, denser, and can add a measure of gravitas to the text. It’s really a preference and not about right and wrong. Readers do expect text to look a certain way, though, and you take a chance of distracting them from the prose if you mess with their expectations.

For those of you using anything other than html to format your ebooks, (pardon my shouting) NO TABS! Tabs, and using the space bar to indent paragraphs, play havoc with ebooks. NO TABS. Your word processor enables you to use style sheets–use them. NO TABS.

How wide an indent?  

The narrow indent is a leftover from the days of pulp fiction when every sheet of paper counted against the bottom line and so the publisher needed to cram as much text onto a page as possible. It looks a bit squishy, especially if the reader prefers narrow line spacing on their device. Wide indents are a writer habit, I think, from being used to working on manuscripts with their half inch indents. Too wide, though, and the ebook can assume the look of a manuscript, and that’s not polished. I prefer a medium width indent of 1.4ems (.3″ in a word processor).

Block paragraphs require spaces between the paragraphs so they don’t run together.

Whether you’re using a word processor or html, you need to include that extra leading in your style sheet–not (never) by manually inserting a blank line between paragraphs. Be aware, too, that you do not want to increase the space between indented paragraphs. Doing so means users of the Kindle iOS app will end up with huge spaces between paragraphs. Smashwords will reject files for inserting extra space.

Another style is one I don’t recommend for full paragraphs. Centering.

Don’t forget that centering IS a style. Don’t just highlight the text then click the “center” command in the menu bar. Make sure your text indent is set to zero so the center doesn’t end up off-center.

Sometimes you’ll need to set off text. Quotes, song lyrics, poetry, missives.

The only difference in coding between the first block quote and the lines of poetry is the use of italics.

What if you want to set off an entire section of text?

Keep it simple, aim for sophisticated, and keep your reader’s comfort in mind while you style your paragraphs.

What about the rest of you? Any fun styling tricks you’d like to share?

Fun With Ebook Formatting: First Lines

One of the easiest ways to make your ebook stand out is to use first line treatments. By making the first lines of chapters or scenes after a break look different from the rest of the text you add visual interest to the “page” and (more importantly) you lessen the risk of confusing readers.

Text in an ebook “flows” to fit the screen. Plus, users can adjust the size of the display. If you use an empty line, for instance, to indicate a scene break–with no other visual clues–the page could break at the break and your readers could end up deeply confused about a point-of-view, time or setting jump.

Besides, first line treatments are fun. Here are a few screenshots off Lucy the Paperwhite Kindle.

Ever since I acquired a Fire tablet, I’ve been playing with colored images (I’ll try to get screenshots off a tablet–you’ll know I succeeded if color images show up here.)

(Did I actually write “expecially” in the sample? Crap...)

Another trick is one I don’t care for myself, but a lot of people do like it. With ereader devices improving their displays, the drop cap looks better, too. (much thanks to William for this screenshot) Notice he used an embedded font for the heading and the drop cap. Embedding fonts is tricky not because the coding is difficult, but because fonts are creative property and there are/can be restrictions on their use. Always make sure you read the license agreements and follow the terms of use.

Most of these first line treatments were created with paragraph styles that can be emulated in Word or Scrivener. (Not that I advocate using either program to format ebooks, but let’s get real, many of you do.) If you want to play with first line treatments, be sure you create a style sheet rather than using tabs, spaces or centering.

Realize, too, that different readers handle html coding in different ways. Not every device will display small caps, for instance. My oldest Kindle is flaky about displaying bolded fonts. You need to experiment and make adjustments.

A few tips:

• Be very careful with first line treatments if you are using Scrivener or Word. Changing font sizes to make small caps can trigger bugs in eink Kindles and play havoc with the user’s ability to change display sizes.
• Also, be careful when using Word to submit to Smashwords. If you are using a no-indent style, make sure to use a style-sheet instead of backspacing to delete the indent.
• Experiment with your image sizes. Percentages work better than pixels.
• Don’t be afraid of color. More and more readers are using devices with color displays and that can make your ebook look fabulous! Check how your graphics look in black-and-white to be sure there is enough contrast in grayscale so the image looks good on an eink device.
• You can learn how to do these tricks in html by going to w3schools.com and searching for information on small caps, drop caps, embedding fonts and other goodies.

So what about you, readers? Any fun tricky-tricks you’d like to share?

How The Kindle Works

I talk a lot about broken ebooks, but judging from the search terms that bring visitors to this site, I suspect many people do not know what I mean. Part of the confusion is because I am actually talking about Kindle books (and I should make myself clearer, sorry). Since I don’t own a Nook (and have never played with one), or an iPad or iPhone or Sony reader or magic toaster, I tend to judge ebooks by what shows up on my Kindle.

I suspect there are a lot of people who don’t own Kindles. Maybe one or two who’ve never even seen a Kindle.

Here is Amazon’s dirty little secret regarding its Kindle. As long the ebook is converted to either mobi or prc, the Kindle can read it. (I convert raw documents all the time since I prefer reading on my Kindle over manhandling reams of paper–I just run a Word doc through MobiPocket creator and load it up. I’ve done that with pdf files, too.) I don’t call those ebooks. A person who isn’t aware of how a Kindle actually works, might be unaware their ebook is broken–after all, Amazon let them upload it and reported no problems.

Now, the wise formatter will convert their ebook using KindleGen and check their work on the Kindle Previewer. Amazon just updated it and it has more options, include some font changing, so it’s more reliable now. To truly make sure the ebook works, it should be loaded on a device and run through its paces. People who produce a mobi file using Scrivener or convert a file in Caliber or MobiPocket or run a Word doc through the onsite converter at Amazon might end up with a broken ebook and not know it. (A kind reader might take pity and send you an email to let you know your book is broken, or they might return it for a refund, or–worst of all–they might decide your ebook is too unpleasant to read and not buy any more of your books.)

Pardon my less than stellar photography–here is what the menus look like on Kindles.

The font sizes are pretty hard to screw up. There was a Kindle-induced bug that shrunk the font, forcing users with older Kindle models to have to greatly increase the font size in order to read. I think that bug was fixed. But I don’t think I’ve ever run into an ebook where the size can’t be changed. The fonts themselves can be changed.

• Keyboard: “regular” “condensed” and “sans serif.
• Paperwhite: Baskerville, Caecilia, Caecilia Condensed, Futura, Helvetica and Palatino
• Fire: Baskerville, Caecilia, Georgia, Palatino, and Helvetica

A common flaw is a locked font (usually in the ugliest choice). After looking at the html in ebooks that have “locked” fonts, I think what is happening is the producer, using a word processor, has defined a font the Kindle doesn’t recognize. So it displays in the closest match. But, since the font is defined, it can’t be changed.

Line spacing is an option on all models of Kindle. It’s a useful one and it’s also a common “break.” When I format a book in html I don’t mess with line spacing. I define the line height so my text isn’t squished, but that’s different than single-space, space-and-a-half and double space. Word has a really nasty habit of inserting a definition for line-spacing into the document that will override the user menu. Sometimes this is deliberate on the producer’s part, sometimes it is inadvertent because that’s just how Word rolls. In any case, it’s undesirable.

Another common problem is when the margins don’t work. In the older Keyboard model the user can set how many words there are on a line (fewest, fewer and default) and on the Paperwhite and Fire they can set the margins to narrow, normal or wide. Breaks tend to happen when a producer using a word processor, Scrivener or InDesign justifies the text. Why this affects the margins, I don’t know, but it does.

The Fire allows the user to change the background color. White, sepia or black (sorry, Paul, but black? Oh, my eyes!). It’s a nifty feature, but there is a drawback.

I apologize for the crappy photo, but if you look very closely at the graphic I circled in red you will see a white box around the graphic. For some odd reason Kindle does not recognize that background is transparent. It’s not a huge issue, but one I hope is soon addressed. Something to keep in mind when using graphic elements in your ebook.

Speaking of graphics… Kindles can be read in landscape mode. The Paperwhite requires an ebook that is specifically coded to be read in landscape mode (such as comic panels or a children’s book–unless, there is some command I am too stupid to figure out and am just missing it) The Keyboard can be changed through the menu and the Fire by turning the device.

Landscape mode can have a significant effect on graphics, especially those that are sized to fit the portrait screen. What I do is size the graphics in percentages so that no matter what size the screen or if the book is being read in landscape mode, it will “shrink” or “expand” to fit the text.

(I was reading a novel that had an interesting block graphic in the header. It looked great in portrait mode, but when I flipped it to landscape suddenly it was just a dumb looking box perched atop the text. Yikes!)

Another common problem is page break failure. The best I can tell (and I’m sure there are those smarter than I who will pop in and set me straight) this is a problem when a producer converts an EPUB file into a mobi file through Caliber. Why Caliber destroys the page breaks is anybody’s guess, but it often does.

So what is the poor ebook producer to do? Especially if you do not have a Kindle on which to test your files? (And this isn’t a slam against people who don’t have Kindles–I don’t have an ereader that uses EPUB files, so I’m playing guess and by golly, too. One advantage with EPUB files is that if my file is validated and I haven’t inserted any weird stuff that could override defaults, I’m fairly certain it will work properly. I’d love it if a Nook owner wrote a guest post about its features and common problems. Any takers?)

• Download the Kindle Previewer and use it. It’s not perfect and you can’t test ALL the device features, but it will give you a far better display than Caliber or even the previewer at Kindle Direct.
• If you use a word processor, Scrivener or InDesign be very careful with your style sheets. Do not justify the text. Leave the line spacing at single-space. Don’t get fancy with your margin settings. What YOU see is NOT what the end user will get.
• Experiment with graphic element sizes and use percentages (when possible) rather than fixed em or pixel sizes.
• Learn html and get away from using not-quite-right for ebooks programs.

So, now you know what I mean when I say “broken” ebooks. EPUB readers, what are the common problems you find?

 

 

Does Style Matter In Ebooks?

Back in my traditional publishing days it was always a big cause for celebration whenever a writer got a hardcover deal (I never got one). It was a sign that the writer was moving up, that the publishers took her more seriously, and that the book itself was important. Bigger price tag, more room on the shelf, and readers who not only read, but collected. It was a Big Deal.

Or was it? Words is words and stories is stories whether they are bound in cardboard or paper. Right? What real difference does it make when a mass market paperback reads the same as a hardcover?

I don’t know about the rest of you, but it is a Big Deal. There is an aesthetic beauty to a well made hardcover book. From the binding itself, to its weightiness, to the extra care taken in typography and layout. It is that “experience” I’ve talked about before. How the look and “feel” of a book can affect how readers experience the text.

You can make a strong argument for “words is words” and the format doesn’t matter. But it’s not an argument that works with me. For instance, I’ve produced a lot of manuscripts. I have read a lot of manuscripts from others. When I am reading a manuscript it makes no difference how good the story is, the reading experience is Work. My inner editor flips to ON and there is no way to turn it off. If I want to read for pleasure, which means getting sucked into the story-world and engaged with the characters, I want a book–in some form–and not a manuscript.

I’m strongly affected by how my ebooks look, too. While getting this post ready I searched through my Kindle for examples and realized I have very few poorly formatted ebooks and not many serviceable-but-plain ebooks either. It’s because I download samples before I buy. If the sample doesn’t appeal to me visually, I probably won’t buy the book. Here’s one I did buy because I happen to like the author’s stories very much, but I absolutely hate the formatting.

This is “page” one.

The problem with this format is that the start of the book looks exactly the same as the rest of the book. Every time I Go To the beginning, this is where I land, then it’s swipe, swipe, click click, trying to figure out where the real beginning is. Even though I enjoyed the story, the lack of visual clues and the text-only formatting bugged me.

Contrast that sample with this one:

Any questions that this is the beginning? Turns out this ebook is actually ‘broken’ so I was forced to read it in ugly font and couldn’t change the line spacing, but despite that the formatter made a real effort to make the book look interesting.

The next example is from an ebook that truly did it right, on every level.

It works properly, the headers tell a story by themselves, and the formatter used some interesting techniques throughout which I’ve been busily trying to figure out how to do.

Contrast that with an example from a sample that I did not buy.

Not only is this ebook badly broken–none of the user features work–but the layout looks exactly like a manuscript. In fact, I suspect the person who formatted this mess took a Word document with manuscript formatting and ran it through MobiPocket.

My mother was never one for good advice, but one thing she said stuck: “Nobody is going to care more about you than you care about yourself.” That applies to books, too–print or digital.

Go back to hardcover versus mass market paperback. The format proclaimed the hardcover as the better book. The more important book. Readers might not articulate it, or even consciously realize it, but they trust the hardcover more. The fact that a publisher cared enough about the book to produce it as a hardcover automatically made it ‘better.” This is perception, not reality. We are talking about taste where perception matters very much and reality takes a back seat.

One reality, reading devices are getting better. I’ve started using color in my formats. Why? Because it’s fun and it’s visually interesting and because it makes the books look fabulous on a tablet.

Because I’m too much of a derp de derp to figure out how to take screenshots off my Kindle Fire, you’ll have to take my word for it. The above example has a hot pink header. It looks fabulous on the Fire.

Now, does your ebook have to be all fancy pants, tarted up like it’s heading to the hottest club in town? Of course not. Different styles for different books. Take a look at the following example. Simple, elegant, but serious to match the tone of the book.

As reading devices improve, readers will grow increasingly demanding about the quality of ebooks. Not only will they expect (and they should!) that the ebooks work properly on their devices, but they’ll start expecting the ebooks to look better, too.

Writers need to ask themselves: Do they want their work perceived as a “cheapie throwaway” or is it “hardcover worthy?” The more YOU care, the more others will care in response.

What about the rest of you? How much does style matter to you?

Set Off Text: Notes, Footnotes, Captions and Excerpts

Hi guys. I’ve been neglecting the blog lately. But I’ve been thinking about you while learning new ways to make ebooks look even more fabulous.

But! Before we go further, I HAVE to show off Plunderbunny’s latest cover creation. (She and I are working together on a huge project, and she created a cover I just love.)

She used an old photograph of a Lakota Sun Dance ceremony (supplied by the author) and an image of a necklace and medicine wheel (made by the author) to create a striking cover for the ebook. I think Spirituality for America turned out great.

Designing the interior was my job. Part of the challenge for this project was that it contained excerpts, quotes, footnotes, notes by the author, and images with captions. I designed the ebook with tablets in mind (especially given that it also contains lots of hyperlinks to sources on the ‘net). That means color comes into play. The big challenge was finding graceful ways to set off text. Goal: Make it stand out, look good and be readable across all devices.

IMAGE CAPTIONS

Lots of ways to caption images. One way is to marry the caption with the image itself. The big plus with this is that the image and caption never get separated. The big downside is that depending on the size screen the reader is reading on, the caption (because it is an image) can become distorted or too small to read.

Because some of the images had largish captions, I decided to make them all part of the text.*

This image had a short caption. I thought it was set off nicely by centering the text and styling it with small caps (font-variant: smallcaps**). Some of the captions were a little long for centered text (I don’t like having one or two words sitting centered on a line themselves) so in those cases I went with a block paragraph style.

A few of the captions were really long. Since small caps are better in small doses and I didn’t want the block of text mistaken for anything except a caption, I chose to reduce the text to 80% and set it like a quote. The beauty of this is (unlike a caption embedded in the image itself) if the user has trouble with the smaller font, they can increase it.

FOOTNOTES

I used the same device for footnotes within the body of the text.

It is possible to embed footnotes in ebooks so that a tap by the user causes a “pop-up” to display, but otherwise the footnote is “hidden.” (If you’re interested in reading more about it, check out Paul Salvette’s blog at bbebooks.com) Because this is a Kindle book and that tricky trick doesn’t work on every Kindle version, I went with setting off the text with 80% font-size and set off like a quote. One decision I struggled with was where, exactly, to place footnotes. There is no “footer” area in an ebook. One option was to link the footnote and place it at the end of the chapter. That would actually be an excellent option in many cases, especially if the text contains a LOT of footnotes. In this case, though, because there weren’t that many, I went with placing them at the end of the paragraphs which were noted.

NOTES AND EXCERPTS

This book also contained several “Author Notes” rather like sidebars in a magazine article. The author wanted them placed within the text instead of in the “notes” section at the back of the book (containing references and the bibliography). There are also excerpts from other writers and works. I could have done regular block quotes and italics. I don’t know about the rest of you, but too much italicizing in an ebook is fatiguing to read (especially on my older Kindle which doesn’t have the best fonts). So I decided to go with a “box and shadow.”

This is where I really had to behave myself. A couple of weeks ago I read David Wong’s novel, This Book Is Full Of Spiders. It is one of the most beautifully formatted ebooks in fiction that I have seen. It was so lovely, I loaded it on my Fire to read it (I usually read on my Paperwhite) just to enjoy the full visual experience. One of the devices the formatter used was to set off “book excerpts” in a box and shadow, using a colored background. It inspired me. Turns out it is not difficult at all to do.

All it requires is to border the block of text and give it a background color. (I learned this from Paul Salvette’s formatting guide, check the sidebar on this blog) The css styling I used for the notes and excerpts was:

div.excerpt
{
margin: 0;
padding: 12px 12px 0 6px;
background-color: #FFDEAD;
border: 2px solid black;
}

Now when I said I had to behave, I meant the color choice. (I still haven’t figured out how to get a screenshot off the Fire, so a photo of the screen will have to suffice) Tablets support a LOT of colors and when you code in html you can pick from many. I had to seriously resist neon pink or day-glo green, instead choosing a light buckskin color that is easy on the eyes, goes with the theme of the book, and best of all, adds the right touch of shading to eink displays without making the text difficult to read.

This ebook was a challenge, but it was an interesting challenge and that’s the kind I like best. I would love to hear from the rest of you how you found good ways to set off text in your ebooks. Share, people!

* Books is books, ebooks is ebooks, and they’re growing apart faster than most can keep up with. I no longer try to emulate “print” in ebooks for two reasons. Number one, trying to emulate a printed book is a frustrating exercise and the best result you can expect is to create an “ugly cousin.” Number two (and most importantly) ebooks have features and interface capabilities most ebook formatters are barely touching. As a reader I love being able to adjust the display to suit my preferences. On my tablet (a Kindle Fire) I enjoy having the ‘net instantly available with a tap of my finger. Nothing bugs me more than an ebook that has been forced into a nearly static display in a vain attempt to make it look like print.

**Small caps. I love small caps. I think they are elegant, show off text better than bolding, and just plain look good. Unfortunately, they don’t display on every device. So in cases where I think text with upper and lower case will work just as well (and the goal is purely aesthetic) I will use “font-variant: smallcaps.” Sometimes, such as at the beginnings of chapters or scenes, where I definitely want the text in all caps no matter what, but do not want the display to look oversized and chunky, I do “faux-caps.” I upper-case the block of text, then set the font-size to 80%. It looks nice no matter what device it’s being read on.

One-Size Does Not Fit All: Different Files For Different Purposes

“This weekend my publisher discovered that the printer has been using the eBook format instead of the formatted printing version for its printing of A JANE AUSTEN DAYDREAM. So if you have a copy of the novel that is only 280 pages and no page breaks… Well, there you go.”

That’s from Scott D. Southard’s blog. I read that and thought, Ouch! I feel your pain. This piggy-backed on what I was doing this past weekend, trying to figure out how children’s books work on a Kindle with my lovely minion Plunderbunny. She’d built a charming children’s poem, but couldn’t get the cover to come up, so we had to puzzle over that. Then we wondered about the weird line spacing issues with the Kindle iOS app. Which led us to scrolling through our tablets to look at broken ebooks and trying to figure out all the whys and wherefores. You get the picture.

In the majority of cases my guess was that the wrong file was being used. Which is surprisingly–distressingly–easy to do.

When it comes to ebook files, the real pain in the patoot about this issue is that the distributors–Amazon, B&N, Smashwords, etc.–will let you get away with it. (Amazon is the worst offender, by the way. I swear they’d accept a fig leaf covered in bird feces.)

Compounding the problem is that very few people have access to every device in existence, so they have to depend upon online previewers. Those are not 100% reliable. My Kindle Previewer, for instance, has just decided it will not allow me to look at my books as eink versions. I’ve been screwed by the previewers (I have three on my computer) and have learned the hard way that the distributor previewers at Amazon, B&N and Smashwords aren’t 100% reliable either. I have three Kindles (two eink and a Fire), but I don’t have a Nook, or an iPad or Android or Sony reader or any of the other dozens of devices out there. (In some ways I have to go on (literally) blind faith when I load a file at distributors for devices I don’t have access to. It’s disconcerting.)

That means I make a lot of different files. My source file, which is a text file. From that I format a basic EPUB file, a mobi/kf8 file, a Smashwords EPUB file, a Smashwords Word file, and possibly a pdf file. Each one has its own quirks and features. While I could take the basic EPUB file, for instance, and run it through Calibre to convert it into a mobi file, it would be a mistake. That file will load on my ereaders and be readable, but it will not work properly.

What I have learned is that a top-notch ebook, no matter what the format, absolutely requires 1) a squeaky clean source file going in; and 2) targeted structure for the platform. Perhaps I should add 3) it helps to have a high tolerance for the top of one’s head blowing off in frustration.

The device makers and distributors lack incentive to standardize their devices (much the way a DVD can be played on any manufacturer’s DVD player, an ebook should be be stable on any ereading device). Reaching that level will take a while, I fear. Hindering standardization is that I don’t think the distributors consider stable ebooks a high priority. Of them all, Smashwords has the highest quality control (which isn’t saying much, I fear). Amazon and B&N will let you publish the digital equivalent of manual typewriter script on sheets of newsprint that have been stapled together.

But! There is hope on the horizon. I happen to know a very smart person who is busily developing a way to uncomplicate a process that has grown increasingly (and unnecessarily) complex. Take one clean source file, run it through his program, and boom! Stable, professional quality ebook files in minutes. Seriously, this is what indie writers need. Not crazy computing skills. Not hours and hours and hours and hours spent trying to figure out the different platforms. Not a meatgrinder that valiantly attempts the impossible task of turning Word-hamburger into EPUB-filet mignon.

I’ll keep you all posted about the progress my friend is making. In the meantime, pay attention to your files to make sure the right one is going to the right place.

Scene Breaks In Ebooks: Giving Readers A Clue

You fiction writers out there. I bet the majority of you love scene breaks. Dispense with boring transitional passages and maneuvering to shift seamlessly character points of view. Hit a paragraph return or two and start the new scene. I’m sure readers appreciate them, too, seeing as how they don’t have to slog through transitional passages and the writer’s effort to shift POV. (I know I appreciate them)

In printed media scene breaks rarely present a problem–even when the book design doesn’t have actual scene break indicators such as asterisks or graphics. A reader sees an inch of white space on the page and that’s the perfect clue that a shift has occurred. Print book designers can also manipulate the amount of text on a page and lessen the chances that a scene break occurs at the bottom of a page, losing the white space and its visual clue that a new scene has started.

Ebooks don’t work that way. (I’m talking about flowable text and not fixed layout) All too often white space looks like a mistake. There is no way to ensure that the break never occurs at the end of the “page.” If it looks like a mistake or if the scene change seems to happen without any clue, the reader is forced to pause to figure out what is going on. If those stutter-pauses build up it can wreck the reading experience and leave the writer with an unhappy reader who will not buy their next book.

Take a look at the following screen shot. Scene break or mistake?

Kind of hard to tell without a real visual clue, isn’t it? The simplest solution is to use a indicator to make it clear that This Is Not A Formatting Error:

No confusion there.

But, what if the writer doesn’t want scene break indicators? What if asterisks or graphics don’t fit the effect he is going for? A simple and effective method is to drop the first line indent.

There are all sorts of ways to indicate scene breaks. Me, being me, I like the fancy stuff. I often use graphics to add visual interest to the page.

I do a lot of reading on my Kindles and “text-fatigue” can be a problem. Kind of like driving through Kansas where it seems the landscape never changes.  “Oh look! More cornfields! Zzzzzzz…” I can only assume others feel the same way. Using a graphic mixes it up a bit, gives my eyes a slight change of scenery. It doesn’t take much.

The important thing to consider is that ebooks don’t offer the same visual clue opportunities as print books, so it’s up to you to come up with something so your readers stay in the story rather than in a state of confusion.

And Yet Something Else To Obsess About

So last night I started reading an older Michael Connelly title, The Black Echo, on my Kindle. (If you’re not a Harry Bosch fan, you should be. Just sayin’…) Even though most ebooks “start” at page one of the story, I like to start at the beginning beginning of the books. Since I happened to be reading on my Fire (I usually read on the Paperwhite) I went to the cover (Covers look great on the Fire!). Then I tapped the screen–and it took me to the “If you enjoyed this product, would you consider leaving a review” page.

That was annoying.

Doubly annoying since I’m of the mind that if something screwy happens with a gadget, I assume it’s because I did something bone-headed, so of course I did it twice (okay three times) before realizing it was the book and not my fumbling fingers.

I know what happened. The ebook producer managed to list the cover as the very last item in the play order in the toc.ncx. You’re not really supposed to do that with mobi/KF8 books. When those files are properly set up, the cover is listed in the GoTo menu, designated as “Cover.” It doesn’t show up unless the user toggles a specific command, but if the user does want to see the cover, it will be at the very beginning.

This little incident, of course, triggered my worry-gene regarding my own set ups, but not concerning the placement of the cover. It’s the Table of Contents. A table of contents is kind of a screwball thing in a novel. A long list of chapters, blah blah blah. With the Fire and the Paperwhite Kindles it’s redundant–if the toc.ncx is properly set up and designated. In older Kindles the producer generated table of contents is essential. There is also the problem of the sample features offered by retailers. Readers who are considering purchasing a novel don’t want to have to page through sixteen pages of a chapter list only to discover there is not enough of the story to properly sample.

(By the way, if you are writing/formatting a non-fiction book it’s wise to put your table of contents, as detailed and useful as possible, right up front so it’s part of the sample. Potential buyers want to know about subjects covered.)

Now I worry that my policy of placing the ToC in the backs of the books could annoy some readers. They are tapping, swiping, thought-controlling along, and all the sudden they are out of the book altogether. No bueno. I could deal with the issue by inserting a THE END page with a little note along the lines of “Thank you for reading this book. Come back soon!” I’ve also considered greatly truncating the ToC so that essentially it says: Front Matter, Story, Back Matter. Readers with the latest models of ereaders and tablets wouldn’t mind that, since their GoTo features gives them a very complete ToC (if the ebook is properly built). Readers with older devices will lose some navigation ability, and that’s no good.

Isn’t this fun? Now I can obsess about the reader’s impression of the very last “page” in the ebook.

 

Format A Nice-Looking Novel For Smashwords

Everybody knows, or at least regular readers know, I don’t like using Word to make ebooks. Just about all distributors allow you to submit a doc or docx file to be converted into an ebook. You shouldn’t. You really, really shouldn’t. An ebook converted from Word will not work properly on many ereaders.

But. One major distributor does require Word files–Smashwords. They have their reasons and until they change those reasons, Word it is.

Rather than bitch again about the sheer silliness of using Word for ebooks, I’ll be constructive. Here is a quick primer on how to make a Word document that will make its way through the Meatgrinder without too much damage. (This is for fiction only. Trying to shove complicated formatting through Smashword’s Meatgrinder will give you hives and bald spots, so if you want to give it a shot, you’re on your own.)

I recommend before you do anything that you go in to TOOLS on Word and turn off all the auto-correct and auto-format features. This will cut down on Word’s “helpfulness” and make a better ebook. I also recommend that you turn on the SHOW feature so you can see the paragraph returns and extra spaces (in the menu bar it looks like a pilcrow).

STEP ONE: START WITH A CLEAN FILE

This is imperative. You will prevent 95% of ebook glitches by making sure your document file is clean. By clean I mean free of the excess or extraneous coding that Word inserts at every opportunity. You must use a text editor for this. I use Notepad++, which is a free downloadable program. Easy to use once you get used to the way it looks.

After your text is edited in Word, go through this checklist:

1. Make sure your curly quotes are turned the right way.
2. Get rid of tabs and extra spaces, including those before and after paragraph returns. Including those between sentences. You do not want double spaces between sentences in an ebook.
3. Get rid of extra paragraph returns.
4. Tag your special formatting such as italics, bolding and underlines. (VERY IMPORTANT: Your special formatting will disappear in the text editor)***
5. Make sure you have proper em dashes and ellipses.

Now COPY/PASTE your text into the text editor. This makes a txt file (text). Go through your file and make sure you have gotten rid of all your extra spaces and hard returns. It will look a little odd, but don’t worry about the lack of formatting–you DO NOT WANT any formatting at this stage. If you are using Notepad++, open the Character Panel (it’s in the Edit drop down menu). That will give you ASCII characters. If you need to change your double or single quotes, em dashes, special characters, etc. use the characters and symbols from the Character Panel.

STEP 2: MAKE YOUR STYLE SHEETS

Smashword’s Meatgrinder is set up to work best with certain stylesheets already built in to Word. If you are not familiar with using stylesheets in Word, now is the time to learn. You’ll find them under FORMAT in the main menu. For most fiction, all you need are four stylesheets.

1. NORMAL
2. HEADING 1
3. HEADING 2
4. center

NORMAL: This is what you’ll use for the body of your text–the main style. You will find listed in style sheets. You can modify it. My recommendation is to stick as close to ereader defaults as possible. So don’t modify too much. Safe settings are:

• Font: 12 point Times New Roman
• Align: Left
• Level: body text
• Indent: 0 for right and left
• Special: First Line by 0.3″ or 0.4″ (this is the paragraph indent)
• Spacing: Before 0; After 0
• Line Spacing: single

HEADING 1: This is what the Meatgrinder will look for to title your book. For most projects, you only need to use it once. Here you can increase the font size (don’t go higher than 16 points and use the same font as for the rest of your book) and bold or italicize it. You can also center your text, drop it down on the “page” and add some space between your title and the author name. A set up might look like this:

• Font: 16 point Times New Roman, bold
• Align: Center
• Level: body text
• Indent: 0 for right and left
• Special: (none)
• Spacing: Before 12; After 6pt
• Line Spacing: single

HEADING 2: This is what the Meatgrinder will look for to find your chapters so it can build the toc.ncx (very important).

• Font: 16 point Times New Roman, bold
• Align: Center
• Level: body text
• Indent: 0 for right and left
• Special: (none)
• Spacing: Before 12; After 3pt
• Line Spacing: single
• Page Break Before (check this box under Format > Paragraph > Line and Page Breaks)

CENTER: You don’t have to have a style sheet for centering text, but it makes life easier since you don’t have to remember to get rid of the indent. Set it up exactly like NORMAL, except:

• Align: Center
• Special: (none)

STEP THREE: Open a new Word file and apply the NORMAL style sheet. COPY your text from the text editor and PASTE it into Word. Your text should be formatted in NORMAL style with indented paragraphs. (Just in case a hiccup occurred, scan through the text and make sure there aren’t any extra paragraph returns–look for blank lines and delete the extra paragraph return)

STEP FOUR: Use FIND/REPLACE to restore italics, bolding and underlining. Then use FIND/REPLACE to delete your special formatting tags.

STEP FIVE: Make your title page. Highlight your book title and apply the HEADING 1 stylesheet. A nice title page for Smashwords will look something like this:

Only the title uses HEADING 1. With everything else I used the CENTER stylesheet.

STEP SIX: Do your chapter heads. Select (highlight) your chapter and apply the HEADING 2 stylesheet. If you set up stylesheet the way I recommended, it will give you a page break.

STEP SEVEN: If you used scene breaks, go through and select whatever you used to indicate scene breaks and center them. I also like to add a paragraph return before and after a scene break just to make them stand out a bit more.

CHAPTER EIGHT: Add links and/or make a table of contents. Both are optional. Links and hyperlinks are something Word handles very well and generally cause no problems with Smashwords. Use the INSERT HYPERLINK command from the menu. If you make a table of contents, use the BOOKMARK option, and bookmark the chapter heads then link within the document.

And there you go. A simple format, rather generic, but it will go through the Meatgrinder, have minimal formatting errors and be readable on the platforms Smashwords distributes to.

Have fun!

***A word about tagging special formatting. The text editor will strip out your special formatting, so you must tag it. All you need are unique strings of text that you can search for. I use hyphens and all caps to make sure the tags don’t get mixed up with my story text.

• Italics: -STARTI- and -ENDI-
• Bolding: -STARTB- and -ENDB-
• Underlining: -STARTU- and -ENDU-

To tag quickly–for italics–in the FIND box, ask it to look for italics but leave the box empty. In the REPLACE box type -STARTI-^&-ENDI- and do a REPLACE ALL. That will wrap all your italics in tags. To reverse the process, toggle on “wild cards”, type -STARTI-*-ENDI- in the FIND box and toggle on “italics” in the REPLACE box, but leave it empty. Do a REPLACE ALL and your italics are restored. Then do a FIND/REPLACE to delete your tags.

QUICK UPDATE: NOW Smashwords is kicking back files if there is leading (extra space) after a paragraph (indented paragraphs only, not block style). So let us cross our fingers that Apple has fixed whatever it was that caused them to squish paragraphs. grumble grumble grumble…